Big data to be made little: Individuals to mine data too

Big data techniques such as collecting browsing habits for marketers could soon be adapted and made available to individuals. It wouldn't be through traditional mass collection and analysis, but by a tool that will allow individuals to choose what they want to share with others. A kind of Big Data goes miniature data. The scheme is being developed at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). The idea is that individuals should be able to share things they do online with others of their choosing in order to democratize the data that's being collected anyway, the scientists think. In other words, it shouldn't be just Google et al who knows what everyone is doing on the Internet.